One local candidate is comparing his crime-fighting abilities to Batman's. A would-be president has promised to raise the minimum wage to $77, because seven is a good number. And the government's "revolutionary" version of the Beatle's song "Hey Jude" has incurred the wrath of the copyright administrators.
Yet if Ecuador's election season seems strange, it pales in comparison to the chaos that went before. Seven presidents in the decade following 1997. Three leaders overthrown. A banking and currency collapse. This was Latin America's basket case.
Today political stability has been restored, thanks in large part to one president's popularity. Rafael Correa's approval rating consistently tops 60 percent, despite two years in power and a worsening economic situation. In Sunday's polls, he needs either 50 percent of the vote or 40 percent with a 10 percent margin over his closest challenger to score a first-round reelection victory. Polls suggest he will get the former, keeping him in office until at least 2013 and making him the longest-serving Ecuadorian president since the country's return to democracy in 1979.
The turnaround in Ecuador's fortunes was made possible by the very depths to which the country had sunk. "When the people don't care about the government, and when the government doesn't care about the people, things are bad," says Pablo Andrade, a political scientist. "People were fed up with both the instability and the social exclusion."
Correa was elected in late 2006, with a slogan pledging to whip traditional parties (a pun on his own surname, which means "belt" in Spanish) and a promise to bring the "long neoliberal night" to an abrupt end. Since then his radicalism has actually gathered pace. A new constitution was inaugurated, along with free schooling and healthcare. Some international debt repayments were first halted and then recently reduced by 70 percent. The U.S. military base in the city of Manta has been ordered to close this year. The state has become increasingly active in economic life, although there have been no nationalizations to date.
The first major challenge to the president's authority has been the economic crisis. Ecuador's earnings, particularly from remittances and oil, have fallen, and most of the population is now considered underemployed. In response, the government has launched a series of protectionist measures aimed at boosting domestic manufacturing. Yet, unpromisingly, there has been little serious debate on them. "We've had a weak election campaign, between a silent government and a pathetic opposition," complains Simon Cuenca, an economist.
Correa's two strongest challengers are Lucio Gutiérrez, the former president ousted by 2005 protests who is fortunate not to be in jail for corruption, and Álvaro Noboa, the country's richest man who is accused of widespread tax evasion and who has lost three previous election attempts. Both are associated by voters with past troubles, and their promises of government beneficence are less credible than Correa's record of actual spending. Hence some opposition supporters have resorted to unfounded rumors that Correa has already printed truckloads of a new currency to replace the U.S. dollar used in Ecuador since 2000.
Such lethargic politics has its benefits. So far the political divisiveness seen in Venezuela and Bolivia -- governed by Correa allies Hugo Chávez and Evo Morales -- has not arrived in Ecuador. Correa has used his presidential pulpit to launch insults at a variety of critics. However, even in the opposition-friendly Guayaquil, Ecuador's biggest city, nearly two-thirds of voters have a favorable opinion of the president. While he seems likely to lose the local and regional elections there, it may be as much because voters wish to temper his power, rather than to kick him out altogether.
What is worrying for Ecuador's future stability is the extent to which current politics revolve around Correa. Social movements, such as the country's historically powerful indigenous confederation, CONAIE, have been kept at bay. The president's own political vehicle, PAIS, may just hang on to its legislative majority on Sunday, yet Correa appears uninterested in allowing it to become a break on, or even the embodiment of, his own policies. His style is direct communication with voters.
Consequently, some observers say that they have seen this movie before and that it doesn't end happily. Latin American caudillos have little record of stable handovers of power. According to Adrian Bonilla, a political scientist, "the only example that there's been is [former Peruvian president Alberto] Fujimori, who left office through a mixture of domestic and international pressure, but without political instability. But there are many differences between him and Correa." This election campaign may be as stable as Ecuadorian politics get for the foreseeable future.
Credit: Henry Mance, World Politics Review; www.worldpoliticsreview.com